The Best Food Gift Books Of 2008

Page 2: Favorite Culinary Reference Books

Learning about food is fascinating and fun, especially with so many gifted researchers sharing their knowledge. To enjoy these books, you don’t need to know how to cook (or have any desire to do so)—just the desire to become more knowledgeable about the world’s great foods. This is Page 2 of a 3-page article. Click the black links below to view the other pages. If you’re looking for more ideas, see our gift recommendations from previous years.

Prices and product availability are verified at publication but are subject to change.

1001 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die

From the 1,001... book series comes this entertaining guide to the foods of the world. While the title is dramatic, this is actually a fashionable encyclopedia of the world’s foods (including American foods, of course). Categories include fruit, vegetables, dairy, fish, meats, aromatics, grain, bakery and confections; entries were selected and written by leading international critics. With good color photos of every single item, this book is both fun to flip through and a serious reference guide. A perfect gift for the foodie.

1001 Foods You Must Taste Before
You Die
Edited By Frances Case
$36.95

The Harney & Sons Guide To Tea

This guide is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in exploring the world of tea: a compendium of the 56 teas every tea connoisseur ought to know, with guided tasting notes for each. Harney, from one of America’s leading tea importing families, knows his stuff, and this book is an invaluable resource for the tea lover. With an appendix that includes the chemistry of tea, a history of tea and a list of sources to buy tea, this book is sure to please. Its tasting menus, pairing tea and food, is an encouragement to host tasting parties—like a wine tasting, with no designated driver required.

Knives Cooks Love: Selection. Care. Techniques. Recipes.

Just as an artist can’t paint without brushes and a marathoner can’t run without sneakers, so a chef can’t cook without knives. All home cooks, too, need a good set of knives and the knowledge of how to properly use and care for them. This beautiful book, an instructional manual with recipes, teaches knife basics, as well as how to select, sharpen and use one’s knives. And just think: Now you’ll know what to buy the gift recipient for his or her birthday—a good set of knives!

Secrets Of The Red Lantern: Stories & Vietnamese Recipes From The Heart

Part cookbook and part family memoir, this charming volume tells the story of the Nguyen family’s escape from Vietnam during the war and their eventual settlement in Australia. At the heart of this book is a love of food, which came to ease the family’s homesickness and led to the success of the Vietnamese restaurant, Red Lantern. With sumptuous traditional Vietnamese recipes accompanied by numerous portraits of family and luscious Vietnamese cuisine, this is a book and a recipe resource to cherish.

Vanilla: The Cultural History Of The World's Favorite Flavor & Fragrance

This book is out of print, but we read it while writing our major review of fine vanilla and were spellbound; unused copies are available from resellers. Did you know more than half the desserts sold worldwide contain vanilla? That it's the only fruit of the orchid family? That thievery, skullduggery and more are behind the demand for the world’s second most expensive spice (after saffron—when you see what it takes to produce it, you’ll understand why). And, for more than 70 years after the Conquistadors found it in Mexico and brought it to Europe, it was used only to flavor chocolate (as the Aztecs used it)—until an apothecary to Queen Elizabeth I suggested it could be a flavor on its own.